


Here's a Map, Here's a Shovel

by angeloncewas



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Clay | Dream-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Dissociation, Families of Choice, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, Isolation, Memory Loss, Mental Instability, Solitary Confinement, Trauma, but it doesn't matter idk, dream is let out of prison, i meant within not his horse but it works either way, i think niki and puffy are still a couple in this, ignores the crimson arc, no beta we die like dream's spirit, sorry it just was too many variables
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29307531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas
Summary: Dream's not sure which one will be more mentally damaging: being locked up inside the prison, or being free outside of it.-He wonders if he’s going to sink through the floor, if Sam’s going to morph into Tommy with a crossbow, if the sky’s gonna turn red and bleed down onto him.Nothing happens. Everything is still.
Relationships: Cara | CaptainPuffy & Clay | Dream, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 256





	Here's a Map, Here's a Shovel

**Author's Note:**

> Check out these [two](https://dreamsclock.tumblr.com/post/642582345280520192/hey-vicea-this-is-illegal-im-not-allowed-to-cry) [posts.](https://dyinginlava.tumblr.com/post/642592389867995136/right-so-apparently-wilbur-recently-said-his-dsmp) I didn't actually use either of them to write this, but reading them inspired me.

_The world is bright._

It’s all Dream can think as he steps out through the Nether portal. The colors he’s met with are shockingly vivid and he has to squint to keep from shutting his eyes.

Sunlight, grass, the hum of a passing bumblebee. Everything he’d resigned himself to never seeing again hits him all at once.

Dream reaches out a hand and flexes it, watching the curves of his own knuckles stretch and contract.

It doesn’t look real. He doesn’t feel real.

“Walk,” Sam commands.

His voice is familiar beyond their interactions within the prison. Dream’s known it in all its forms, after all. He was the one to turn it from kind friend to warden.

The vault was his own design; Pandora’s jar was made in her image.

Sam’s sword presses intently against the column of Dream’s spine so he wills his feet forward, every step on something other than obsidian strange and padded. 

“If it was up to me,” Sam says gruffly, “I’d keep you in there until you rot.”

Dream can’t get his mind in order enough to respond. He hasn’t seen Sam since the food system was made automated, has only heard his voice insisting that visitors heed his demands.

It twists with his face in view, the words not lining up with his mouth correctly.

Sam catches his gaze and shrugs, the sword digging a little deeper into Dream’s skin as he’s pushed further forward.

“But it’s not up to me, so.”

The SMP has changed since Dream’s last seen it. There’s a building with a sign that glows so brightly, he has to physically turn away. There’s a small stone path with flowers lining the sides.

The whole thing feels two-dimensional, like he could reach out and knock over the ivy-covered wall to reveal that it’s just cardboard, a prop obscuring a clock on a wall or a cascading layer of lava.

Sam stops their walk with a firm grip on Dream’s arm and he tries not to stumble and fall, awareness of his surroundings sliding into place.

 _Someone rebuilt the Community House,_ he realizes. It looks a little different, but it stands in the same place it was first built, brick walls and all.

Sam’s tone is flat, devoid of any emotion. “We’re here.”

Dream blinks rapidly. The edges of his vision distort.

The water’s reflection is near-blinding and his mind drifts away from him again, not processing where he is or what’s happening.

He wonders if he’s going to sink through the floor, if Sam’s going to morph into Tommy with a crossbow, if the sky’s gonna turn red and bleed down onto him.

Nothing happens. Everything is still.

“What-” Dream coughs as his voice comes out strangled. “What do I do now?”

“Learn how to not be a terrible person?” Sam laughs without any humor.

“I meant…”

“Yeah. I know what you meant. I don’t know and I don’t care.” 

Sam stares at the house and Dream watches him turn into a younger version of himself before disappearing. He can hear the building crashing down to rubble. He can spot his own body, floating face-down in the water.

“You’re free,” Sam’s voice cuts through the noise in his head and everything is suddenly back to how it was. “I can’t tell you what to do anymore.”

Sam pauses, waiting for something, but Dream doesn’t know what, doesn’t have anything to offer.

His silence is met with a heavy sigh and he hardly even registers Sam’s exit as he goes; the feeling of a threat over his shoulder persisting.

_Free._

The word is small and succinct. The world is vast. He’s not sure what will break if he touches it.

Dream stands and stares till the sun begins to set. He’s seen people on the edges of his vision, staring, questioning, fearful, but he knows they're not really there.

He saw them in the prison too.

It’s fine when it’s George, wearing a cracked crown and a stern expression. It’s bad when it’s Tommy, anything from despairing to mocking.

It’s worst when it’s Wilbur.

When it’s Wilbur - with a smile more artificial than the one across his mask and a hand-sewn uniform with rough edges, without any weapons, or armor, or pretense - Dream wonders how long he has left.

The dead come to collect their debts, and Dream owes a lot of people more than he can afford.

There’s a spare bed in one of the chests inside, so he takes it in his hands and drags it up to the top floor. He doesn’t know when someone will come with a score to settle, but he might as well wait till then.

Dream’s used to waiting, now. His time hasn’t been his since Tommy took an axe to his neck.

Dream sets up a place to stay, a small corner next to a window, on autopilot.

He can’t look at his hands because they feel like someone else’s limbs, he can’t look at his reflection because it stares blankly back at him.

He can’t reconcile himself with this version of reality, where he’s not reading through his own books as though they’re a stranger’s stories.

The Community House was his home once. He knows that, just like he knows that he blew it up.

So how is he standing in it? What happened? Where does he go?

The sun dips below the horizon and Dream tries to sleep.

He’s aware that he’s supposed to, but the feeling of a bed instead of a dusted-off patch of obsidian makes his stomach lurch.

Lights flicker in the distance and the occasional unintelligible shout rolls across the land.

Nighttime is different when you can see it.

Dream lies on the ground and stares at the ceiling until his body rebels against his unwillingness to rest.

 _Maybe I'll wake up in my cell,_ he thinks idly.

_I miss my clock._

* * *

No one ever comes up to the second floor.

Dream can acutely hear every person who enters, though he can hardly ever tell who they are. Passing through the main level on their way to the castle or rifling through the storage in search of some spare iron, not a single person even approaches the staircase.

They probably know what awaits at the top. He’s the elephant in the room, the unspoken burden everyone must bear.

It’s this or imprisonment, and they decided against that, for some reason.

Dream gets tempted, every so often, to actually go out into the world.

It’s an itch under his skin, something crawling up the gaunt lines of his ribs. Just a few steps away are stalks of bamboo he could touch and people he could attempt to speak to.

Following that train of thought always makes him feel sick, so he never does.

Instead, he keeps a small store of raw potatoes under the bed he doesn't sleep in and eats from it, only sneaking out when he needs more.

It’s fine. It’s probably better than confinement.

Days pass in a blur.

Sometimes, he can laugh at it. The situation. His life. Dream played god and fell to man. It’s poetic. It’s perfect. The house lost and everyone who mattered went home happy.

Sometimes, the suffocating fear of being put back in that place is the only thing that keeps him from screaming.

So he watches the window and waits for nothing.

* * *

Dream has no idea how long it’s been when he hears an innocuous question in a voice he can actually place.

“Where did I put that spruce?”

_Puffy._

It hits then. Something does, at least. Like his center of gravity has shifted and the world clicks abruptly into focus.

Dream stares down at the pale skin of his fingers and swallows hard. These are his hands, the same hands that tore Tommy from his home, that destroyed a country built on hope, that took a fruitless deal with someone masquerading as powerful.

He’s out of the prison and he’s in the Community House and everything is wrong and Puffy is…

They never put a word to it, not really. The way he trailed after her and she gave him gifts in return, the word “duckling” followed by an exasperated click of a tongue.

She’s the closest thing Dream’s ever had to family.

He listens to the sound of her footsteps until they grow faint, only to then scramble to the window. He catches sight of her just as she’s walking through the arch and he watches as she wanders back down the Prime Path, disappearing past his line of sight.

Dream breathes in deeply and turns back toward his bed.

She’s there. Puffy, in front of him. Sat cross-legged and casual. She holds a stick of dynamite. Her expression tells him nothing.

He blinks and she’s gone.

* * *

It doesn’t get worse, but it doesn’t get better, either. It all just continues, mornings melting into nights as the sun circles and his heart keeps time in his ribcage. Dream spends most of it staring out the window.

Scenery still looks flat. The colors are too artificial and the light doesn’t hit at quite the right angle.

It feels like he’s watching a projection of his past and not now, not Tubbo walking by in a fluffy coat and a girl with vines circling her arms staring at her own reflection in the lake.

The only person he keeps track of is Puffy.

She seems to talk to anyone available. Only four potatoes left and it’s Antfrost, his whiskers twitching as she gestures wildly. His bedspread is crumpled and it’s Purpled, who rolls his eyes as she swats at him and the two take off running.

She doesn’t come by every day, but she’s around pretty often.

Dream wonders if she knows he’s watching.

Most of the time she’s with someone he doesn’t know. They look like a totem, but Dream’s not sure if that’s his eyes and mind playing tricks on him, or offering him a sign, or if they actually are some creature of undying.

The two of them sit quietly on the path. They plant poppies along the water’s edge. Their voices carry from downstairs and he hears the word _dad._

Puffy throws the totem a baked potato and Dream traces the motion with his finger against the glass.

“She rebuilt this, you know.”

Dream jolts at the sound of a voice so close, turning quickly and pressing his back against the wall. His eyes slip shut and he wills his heart to stop pounding so loudly; he can feel it moving blood through his veins.

He can also feel the person’s gaze flitting across him. Dream forces himself to look.

It’s Niki, of all people. Her hair’s a different color than when he last saw and an oversize coat hangs from her shoulders. She seems distinctly unfazed.

“Ranboo started it, I think,” she continues, “but she finished the job.”

Niki laughs lightly. Genuinely, brightly. It’s disorienting in the cramped space he’s claimed. “She’s just that kind of person. You know.”

No weapon comes to strike him and she stands still and sure, so Dream nods tentatively and clears his throat. “Taking care... taking care of what no one else wants to.”

Against his will, a bitter tinge slips into his words. To be the discards of a world you built is the longest fall from grace, and not even Puffy cares to pick up the scraps of her baby bird.

Niki obviously hears it, but she’s offering him conversation, not sympathy. She nods in apparent agreement.

“That’s Foolish, who she’s with. She adopted him.”

_Ah._

She can’t see his face, but her expression is knowing. “Feeling replaced?”

Dream can’t tell if that’s what it is. He feels hollow, as though whatever was meant to reside within him has rotted and left nothing behind.

Niki’s voice comes to him at a weird cadence and he can’t imagine Puffy having family dinner with that totem thing in her mushroom house.

“Why are you talking to me?” he asks, instead of answering.

She seems to ponder his question. “I might need you, if my plan goes well.”

“What- what’s your plan?”

Niki smiles serenely, an echo of a blonde girl in a bakery window. “I want Tommy gone.”

_“...What?”_

“You heard me.”

Dream can’t tell if he’s hallucinating her, this ally to the enemy, the soft underbelly of a revolution full of men willing to bet their lives.

He reaches out and clumsily touches her arm; she doesn’t even flinch. The fabric of her sleeve is thin.

“Why would you tell me this?” he hisses.

“Why not?”

 _Because I am the villain,_ he thinks, unwillingly. Some distant part of him mocks his own melodrama, but he mostly is just trying to catch up with the knowledge that _she wants to kill Tommy._

Niki’s grin only widens at his silence. “Who would you tell?”

She pries his fingers off of her jacket gently and drops his hand. It falls, limp, and she watches it with some level of confusion flitting across her face before lifting her own in a small wave and turning to leave.

Dream watches her go. White noise clambers up his ears and he wonders if this is all some sort of vision.

Maybe he’s just thrown himself into the fire again, a desperate attempt to get Sam to speak.

Maybe he’s actually in that small basin of water next to his clock on the wall, trying to drown.

Everything blurs.

Dream’s sense of reality is little more than mud at the bottom of a shallow pond. It’d probably be frustrating if he could bring himself to care.

Time passes and there are slight shifts in the view outside his window and the moon chases the sun over and over again.

Only upon realizing that the memory of the last vivid event in his mind - Niki and Puffy and Puffy’s son - is tattered and frayed, does he go looking for a book and quill downstairs.

The paper’s texture makes him dizzy, but he doesn’t know how else to keep track of things.

_Niki spoke to me,_ he writes.

_I don’t know what she said._

_The world is bright._

_I think I used to think that it was beautiful._

_I think I used to know what I was doing._

**Author's Note:**

> To conclude:
> 
> \- I really just put Niki in everything I write, don't I?  
> \- I'm in a lecture about graduation and I'm near tears (/gen, /neg)  
> \- Drink water if you haven't in a while. Right now  
> \- Check out my Tumblr? Same @, I just posted a long thing about Dream and Ranboo


End file.
